This ebook is available for the following devices:

iPad

Windows

Mac

Sony Reader

Cool-er Reader

Nook

Kobo Reader

iRiver Story

more

Knowledge sharing
A number of months ago my notebook computer crashed, and given its ancient
vintage, was not worth replacing. The first thing I did was to talk to friends who had
gone through similar experiences, and of course I welcomed the opportunity wallow in
the warmth of their commiseration. To make matters worse I had no backup disc, so
my friends also advised me how to go about recovering files from my old hard drive.
I’m not overly computer-technology literate, so this was daunting enough, but next I
faced the challenging task of choosing a new notebook.
First, I prepared myself by talking to local vendors about their products, and by
checking books and reviews by acknowledged experts. Then I went back to share with
my network details of the models that I had investigated. I had already decided on the
particular notebook I felt would best fit my requirements, but in talking to my friends I
was persuaded to change my mind and pick a different model. I purchased that
machine and it is giving me excellent service.
I don’t believe that this overall experience is all that unusual; indeed, I think it’s
quite commonplace in regard to many of the problems that we face in life and work.
Most of us welcome support in addressing our challenges, and seek the help and advice
of our social networks in resolving them. The example shows that I do not exclude the
use of databases, books etc. However, I do believe that intervention by familiar trusted
social elements is essential for optimum knowledge sharing to eventuate. As I noted
above, it is often this social element that provides the final, but most influential,
recommendation in the decision-making process. This is because these members of a
trusted network ensure the “safety” and “cultural fit” of the decision, whereas although
other arms-length elements provide guidance, in the final analysis, they will probably
seem too distant from the complexities of the local situation to be persuasive.
For me, this episode defines many of the principles of “knowledge sharing”, and
prompted the topic for this Special Issue. It got me wondering why, if we follow this
process so frequently in our everyday lives, we do not follow it in our organizational
lives? Well, as individuals in informal organizational communities we do!
Unfortunately, we don’t formally recognize it, or attempt to address its ramifications
as a matter of organizational policy and practice. Maybe it’s so commonplace that
managers fail to see its utility, just like goldfish are said to fail to comprehend the need
for the water in which they swim. Or maybe it’s just not technologically sexy enough. This is not a paradox that has gone un-noticed, and Don Cohen and Laurence
Prusak have devoted an excellent book to the subject (Cohen and Prusak, 2001). They
write:
We experience work as a human, social activity that engages the same social needs and
responses as the other parts of our lives: the need for connection and cooperation,
support and trust, a sense of belonging, fairness, and recognition. But analysts still often
see organizations as machines (for producing goods, services, or knowledge), or as an
assemblage of self-focused individuals – free agents or “companies of one” – who
somehow managed to coordinate their individual aims long enough to accomplish a task.
As much as anything else, this disconnection between how people experience
organizations and how experts describe them has prompted us to write In Good
Company (Cohen and Prusak, 2001, pp. x).
In talking about physics, David Finkelstein in his introduction to Gary Zukav’s “The
Dancing Wu Li Masters” (Zukav, 2001, pp. xxiv) mused that there were thing-minded
people and people-minded people, and that physics had become too scary for
thing-minded people because it had become so “thing-less”. I have the impression that
in organizations we have thing-minded managers, who are so scared any time an
organization looks like becoming thing-less that they have the urge to make it
people-less. Or maybe it’s simply that all of this emphasis on the importance of social
structures is too new to have as yet penetrated organizational thinking. Well, in this
regard, consider the following three excerpts from an article by John Seely Brown and
Paul Duguid (Seely Brown and Duguid, 1991):
(1) “Recent ethnographic studies of workplace practices indicate that the ways
people actually work usually differ fundamentally from the ways organizations
describe that work in manuals, training programs, organizational charts, and
job descriptions. Nevertheless, organizations tend to rely on the latter in their
attempts to understand and improve work practice.” The authors go on to
examine one such study and argue that “ . . .conventional descriptions of jobs
mask not only the ways people work, but also significant learning and
innovation generated in the informal communities-of-practice in which they
work. By reassessing work, learning, and innovation in the context of actual
communities and actual practices, we suggest that the connections between
these three become apparent. With a unified view of working, learning, and
innovating, it should be possible to re-conceive of and re-design organizations to
improve all three.”
(2) “ . . . to understand the way information is constructed and travels within an
organization, it is first necessary to understand the different communities that
are formed within it and the distribution of power among them.”
(3) “ . . . attempts to introduce ‘teams’ and ‘work groups’ into the workplace to
enhance learning or work practice are often based on an assumption that
without impetus from above, an organization’s members configure themselves
as individuals. In fact, as we suggest, people work and learn collaboratively and
vital interstitial communities are continually being formed and reformed.”
Seely Brown and Duguid wrote these words in 1991, so I have only a slight hope that
the contents of this special issue of The Learning Organization will soon significantly impact management thinking. However, the authors contributing to this special issue
have most admirably clarified and updated the concepts and techniques for effective
knowledge sharing, and as always I am optimistic that we are making a difference –
after all, large oak trees do grow from little acorns.
In our first article, Martyn Laycock presents an in-depth overview of the practical
challenges and strategic significance of knowledge and knowledge-sharing in
organizations. The roles of learning and networks are discussed, together with the
value of collaboration in the development of sustainable competitive edge. Martyn
illustrates these themes by examining the challenges three major organizations have
faced in seeking to use learning and knowledge as sources of sustainable competitive
edge.
The second article is by Patti Anklam, Rob Cross, and Vic Gulas. With illustrations
from the real-life story of MWH, a global engineering consulting firm, they describe
organizational network analysis, and how it can be used to uncover communication
patterns and reveal opportunities to get the right connections to the right people at the
right time. They also describe practical initiatives and activities that an organization
may adopt in concert with this analysis to ensure that knowledge is shared.
Next Dave Snowden details issues related to ways social network analysis is
currently applied, and argues for analysing community from an aggregation of
function viewpoint rather than coalescences of purpose, and for a primary focus on
identities rather than individuals. Dave further maintains that switching to an
experimental approach he terms social network stimulation will promote voluntary
formation of cross-silo informal identities, and generate learning within and about
organisations.
In our last article, Peter Smith links the success of an organization’s knowledge
sharing strategy, and the strength of its strategic capabilities, to its ability to visualize
relationship-networks among employees, and deal with patterns of positive or negative
influence. Peter explores the importance of opinion leaders to knowledge sharing,
explains how network visualization and analysis is applied, describes practical means
for utilizing the influence-related information obtained, and references a number of
case studies.
Peter Smith

Previously published in: The Learning Organization: An International Journal, Volume 12, Number 6, 2005